Under fire from the Boy Scouts of America and under investigation by law enforcement, two Utah troop leaders who taped themselves gleefully toppling a boulder from a Jurassic-era rock formation in a state park said Friday they should have been more hands-off.

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Taylor and Hall, who were on a trip to Goblin Valley State Park with eight Boy Scouts, recorded the moment they dislodged the rock from the spot it had been perched for 170 million years.

The video, which was posted to YouTube by the Salt Lake Tribune, shows them cheering and high-fiving, crowing that they had saved lives. Taylor struck a pro-wrestling strongman pose and Hall sang the 1990 dance-party hit, “Wiggle It — Just a Little Bit.”

“We have now modified Goblin Valley,” Hall declared on the video.

A rock formation which had withstood all of nature’s fury for 170 million years could not survive the ignorance of some Utah Boy Scout leaders?

Bullshit.

I’m not buying the “we were only trying to help” excuse. Nobody is that stupid, not even in Utah. Especially not in Utah. I’ve spent plenty of time exploring Bryce Canyon, Zion and Arches national parks, all in Utah. These places are filled with fascinating rock formations which may look precarious but have actually been standing for hundreds of millions of years. It’s a signature feature of the state’s natural landscape. There is no way in hell Boy Scout leaders in Utah are not aware of this. They were just being assholes, plain and simple.

Then again, maybe Glenn Taylor truly is that stupid. Because it appears just a few weeks before taping himself destroying an ancient rock formation, he had filed a personal injury lawsuit related to a car accident which happened waaaay back in 2009:

Taylor, the man who is seen actually shoving the rock to the ground, had filed a personal injury lawsuit against a woman and her father for injuries he says he suffered in a 2009 car crash. Taylor filed the lawsuit at the beginning of September saying that after that accident he injured his back and had to “endure great pain and suffering, disability, impairment, loss of joy of life.” Taylor also says in the lawsuit that the accident was “debilitating.”

Alan Macdonald says he was surprised when he saw the lawsuit come across his desk. He says his daughter rear-ended several cars during that accident, Taylor, he says, was one of them. Macdonald says no one went to the hospital after the crash.

He says after watching the video that has taken off across the Internet, he thinks Taylor doesn’t look debilitated at all, “he’s climbing over other rocks,” says Macdonald, after watching the tape, “then he lines up, gets leverage and pushes that big old rock several times before he finally pushes it over,” Macdonald continues, “then he turns and twists and high fives and yucks it up and flexes his muscles he just doesn’t look like a terribly disabled person to me.”

Glenn Taylor, I believe you’ve just learned a cardinal rule: don’t fuck with Mother Nature. She will not be amused.

8 responses to “Assholes Are Stupid”

I’m sure that scoutmasters enjoy drinking as much as anybody else. But can’t they at least wait until lights out? What kind of example is that fat slob setting for these youth? What is he, like twenty-eight years old? He looks like he weighs over three hundred pounds. Shouldn’t he at least be able to fit into a uniform? What about the Boy Scout Code of Conduct?

Actually, the rock formations are more fragile than you let on. The rock may be a hundred and seventy million years old, but it spent the vast majority of that time buried under other rock. The actual goblins in Goblin Valley are quite recent. So are most of the other geological wonders, like the arches in Arches; at least one named arch (Wall Arch) has collapsed since the park was founded. Even the Grand Canyon is only a few million years old, and it cuts through some rock that’s over a billion years old.

That said, anyone who’s visited Goblin Valley should know that the goblins are damned stable. If you look around, you don’t see any toppled over remnants of goblins, which you would if they were inclined to fall. My impression is that the goblins erode more or less evenly, so they tend to lose chunks but don’t fall over. Besides, even if one did fall over, the chances of it happening when anyone was nearby are minuscule.

Utah is home to Uintas and a few other good breweries. Green River is also about a hundred miles from Grand Junction. I don’t think there’s a problem gettin’ holt to beer, wine, demon rum and Jell-O shots. Hell, maybe there’s a BS merit badge for THOSE!